Artist Interview - Rich Smukler
They say that sufferers from "photo flu" get better but they never get well. How did you catch it?
I had a Kodak Brownie-Hawkeye camera as a young man and have never looked back. Out of college, my first job was with the Rohm & Haas Company in Philadelphia (now defunct) as a public relations and advertising copywriter. I often wrote about certain applications of company products at locations across the country. The company armed me with a camera and unlimited film to help put together the articles sought. They
Rich Smukler
also encouraged the use of the camera to my heart’s content and didn’t seem to care how much film I used, professionally or privately. If you remember back in the day, before digital, this could get rather costly, not like today where you can take tons of images without cost.
Photo remained secondary to your next career step, too.
Working as an ad copywriter was a stop along the way towards my attending Villanova School of Law from which I
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graduated and eventually opened my law practice in Philadelphia. My love of photography stuck with me, but I was seriously diverted from my creative pursuits. It wasn’t until I “retired” from the practice of law, and moved to Florida, that the flames were re-ignited.
Going back, do you remember the first “decent” photo you made, perhaps the one that started everything?
The highlights of an early portfolio were several images from Spring Mountain Ski area outside of Philadelphia. The snow and fog veiled the trees creating an eerie, ghostlike setting that caught my eye. To this day, I keep my camera battery charged and ready to go, in hopes of a morning fog to capture yet another atmospheric wonder.
Many of us put the scare quotes around "retired" because getting serious about photography has actually meant more work. Talk about your training and trajectory?
Digital camera work was still developing, but I still shot with my trusty Canon AE1. A friend of mine was closely affiliated with Toscana Photographic Workshop (TPW) in San Quirico d’Orcia, Italy, and asked if I might be interested in taking classes. I showed him my limited portfolio, which he shared with the owner of TPW, and they encouraged my attendance.
The best and quickest way to learn your craft as a photographer is to attend a top-notch school. I was fortunate to have attended TPW for seven fabulous summers, learning from the best the world of photography had to offer in a magical country. I studied under David Alan Harvey, a Magnum and National Geographic photographer, Sandro Santioli, one of Italy’s foremost landscape photographers, and Arno Rafael Minkkinen, a Finnish-American teacher whose works are praised worldwide, just to name a few. During those years, living in South Florida, the